A Brief Tale
by ohwonders
Summary: "List a brief tale; / and when 'tis told, O that my heart would burst!" A collection of drabbles based on M. L. Rio's 'If We Were Villains.'
1. Fool

"Alexander," he says, brisk and breathless with cold, the draught from the door carrying a single breath of winter. "I know you're awake, you bastard."

"Yeah," I say, not bothering to open my eyes.

It comes out as a wordless croak, and Colin sighs beside me. "You idiot," he whispers, voice cracking a little. "What the hell were you doing?"

I grunt, not sure how to respond to the unfamiliar notes of concern in his voice.

"Alexander," Colin says again, sharper. "Open your eyes and look at me." He sounds a little like Pip when she's angry, which isn't often, but it works. I tilt my head to the side, blinking slowly, still unused to the yellow-white light of the hospital. Colin is crouching beside the bed, our faces surprisingly close.

"I'll be fine," I say, suddenly irritated. "I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again." My voice is a sandpaper rasp, the words scraping their bitter way through my throat.

"You're damn right it won't," Colin snaps. "I've talked to Filippa, and the others. We've got you covered." He covers his mouth with his hand suddenly, jaw tightening. "What the hell were you doing?" he asks again, muffled and choked. "Tell me. What were you trying to do?"

"The usual," I say eventually. "Get out of here for a while." I lift the hand that isn't connected to an IV line and wave vaguely, fingertips brushing against my temple.

There's a silence. Colin stares at me for a few seconds, expression unreadable, and then stands and turns on his heel. "I thought you were fucking dead," he says to the opposite wall. I can see his hands shaking as he clenches them into fists. "At first. I knocked on your door and nobody answered, so I opened it and- and you were just lying there. On the floor. I didn't even think of drugs at first, I just thought you were dead, and then you- you moved or something, I don't even remember, but I couldn't move, I just stood there staring until I thought to run for help, and then-" He breaks off, turns round again. "The others are furious," he says, almost matter-of-factly. "Well. Filippa is. I haven't seen so much of the rest. She came to find me yesterday. Wanted to make sure I was okay."

"And are you?"

"I don't know," he says. "None of you lot are, are you." It's not a question.

I try a laugh; it's as painful as speaking. "Is it that obvious?"

He crosses the room in two steps and crouches beside me again, a solemn look in his eyes. "I think everything's a lot more obvious than we think it is, if you look for the right things," he says, voice gentle now. "But I don't know where to look with you, and maybe if I did, this wouldn't have happened."

"Colin-"

"No, Alexander. You promised you'd tell me if you needed help with- with this, back at Christmastime." He looks younger suddenly, more vulnerable, a character pulled out of his own play and into our personal tragedy. I open my mouth to speak again, and he shakes his head, cutting me off. "You should have talked to me," he says. "I would have listened."

" _He's mad that trusts in the tameness of the wolf, a horse's health,_ _a boy's love, or a whore's oath,"_ I say, almost without thinking. His hand clasps mine, his fingers running across the lines of my palm like a prayer.

" _And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays_ ," he answers. "People care about you, Alexander. God knows why, but they do. Just accept it, can't you?" He bows his head, and his lips brush the back of our joined hands, painfully gentle, dry as a leaf from the long-gone fall.


	2. Paris

She washes her face at the basin and Lady Macbeth slips into her head like she's seven again, trying on her father's coat that's two feet and a lifetime too big for her, a role she's toyed with but never touched in earnest, one she pushed away and locked deep inside her years ago back when she first realised things wouldn't change.

Her mask lies abandoned on the shelf- she tries to be neat, but not obvious. She knows where things are, where they're going, where they'll inevitably end up when she's too tired to put them back properly, but she doubts that anyone else could say the same. It gleams in the dim light, silver and black, purple touches bruise-dark in the shadows. When she was wearing it, she felt almost invisible; a wall made of silk and words, something else to hide her heart behind.

 _"This is that banish'd haughty Montague_ ," she'd said earlier, and watched James flinch behind his mask, " _that murder'd my love's cousin."_ He stayed down as she approached him, crouching on his heels beside Wren's still body. " _Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee. Obey, and go with me, for thou must die."_

There was a pause, long enough for her to worry that he'd forgotten his line, and then he'd risen to his feet and stepped towards her, hand extended. " _I must indeed, and therefore I came hither_ ," he said, soft and wistful. " _Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man."_ She'd reached out to catch his arm almost unintentionally as the scene played out, and he'd twisted away, stumbling. " _Stay not; be gone! Live, and hereafter say a madman's mercy bade thee run away."_

He'd told her to run before; a ghost standing there in the night with blood on his hands. "You don't have to have seen me," he'd begged her, shaking so hard the boathook swayed dangerously in his grip. "Go, go, forget it, please-"

And she'd stepped forwards, taken his arm and pressed into the bruises she'd known about for weeks hard enough to hurt, to pull him back. "Come inside," she'd said, and when he'd staggered, she'd put an arm round his waist like it was a dance and led him away.

She hadn't seem him nor Wren after the performance ended; he'd helped her up when it ended, and they'd both left- together or not, she didn't know. It had been a strange party, more subdued than Halloween, the room aching from the tragedy of it all, restrained by the grandeur and the uneasy elegance of the masks. She'd watched the others for a while; Alexander, lounging by the drinks table, leering at the younger years while Oliver glared at him from across the room, Meredith, accepting dances and compliments alike until they bored her, all of them adrift.

A trace of fine glitter from the mask comes loose on her hands as she rinses them again, the water cool against her skin. A part of her thinks that it could wash it all away; the blood and the bruises and the tears, saltwater trails matting fine hair to faces while she tries to pick up the pieces. She pulls herself a little closer, a little colder, thinks of Wren and James, both of them worn thin under the lights. _Out, damned spot_. Let us be human again.


End file.
